By Joanna King and Tereza Ma
GLOSTER – Families gathered to celebrate a relatively “new” church in the history of the diocese on Saturday, Sept. 9 at Holy Family in Gloster. Bishop Joseph Kopacz, Father Anthonyclaret Onyeocha and several of the founding families gathered for a special Mass in celebration of 40 years of the “young” parish.

In 1983, the few Catholics of Amite County were scattered but one woman had a dream to bring them together.

June Vallely moved to Gloster in 1980, she and her husband Bill, along with their five children had to travel over 23 miles away to St. Joseph in Woodville for Mass.

“Trying to get the kids ready, get them up, feed them, get them ready to go to church … it was hard work,” said Vallely.

GLOSTER – June Vallely displays her plaque presented to her for her contributions to the Holy Family parish in Gloster. On left, the tabernacle sits behind the altar at Holy Family parish. It was donated to the fledgling parish in 1983 from a church in Illinois. (Photos by Tereza Ma)

“So, I started asking around in the community if there were any Catholics, or did they know of a Catholic.”
From that, Vallely began making a list; making it her mission to establish a Catholic Church in Amite County.

“Something was just pushing me and pushing me,” said Valley.

Then it hit like lightening.

One night in the middle of a thunderstorm, Vallely shot up from a slumber and went to the kitchen table and began to write.

“I started writing this letter to the Bishop. The words kept coming out.”

A couple of months later, Bishop Brunini gave permission for a church building in the small Catholic community in Gloster. The name Holy Family was even drawn from a brown paper bag. Everyone at Mass that given Sunday submitted a name and the youngest member of the church, Jason Chabreck, drew the name.

With the assistance of Sister Margaret Maria Coon, a retired college philosophy teacher and former provincial of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth of Kentucky, who had retired to the area, the fledgling congregation began to take shape.

The first location was an old store front on Main Street, the walls of which were covered in burlap to cover large holes.

“Our first altar was a kitchen cabinet from one of our parishioners,” said Vallely, reminiscing.

Other first items were a brass crucifix from an army surplus story, a baptismal font from a Methodist church in Crosby, a tabernacle from a Catholic Church in Illinois and various hand-me-downs from other parishes across the diocese. It didn’t matter where the items came from, the founding families were happy to have a church of their own for their growing community.

To fundraise families would hold dinners on Fridays during Lent, serving Cajun delicacies such as jambalaya and shrimp etouffee. Parishioners would take orders from the area, including Liberty, Woodville, Centreville and Gloster. Each week earning $1,000 or more for their young parish.

“It was lots of fun,” said Vallely. “We loved bringing the whole community together.”

Michele Chabrek was also of one of the founding families of Holy Family. Along with Vallely, she is one of the only remaining families from the beginning of the parish.

“Through hard work and faith, we’ve managed to come together and provide for the community and any of our spiritual needs.”

At the 40th anniversary celebration, Vallely was recognized for her contributions to the history of the parish with a special plaque.

“We wanted to do something special for June to let her know all of her hard work did not go to waste,” said Pauline Gauthier, a resident of Gloster for 36 years.

“We’re not a big parish or big community, but those of us that are here – we’re family.”

By Berta Mexidor and Tereza Ma
WOODVILLE – A grand gathering, after a special Mass celebrated by Bishop Joseph Kopacz, took place in the gardens of the St. Joseph community in Woodville where parishioners and Catholic community commemorated the 150th anniversary of the founding of the parish, on Sunday, Sept. 9.

The historic Mass was concelebrated by Father Anthonyclaret Onyeocha, pastor of St. Joseph Woodville and Holy Family Mission Gloster and Father PJ Curley, who served the parish in the 1970s.

The congregation that filled the pews came from Woodville, Baton Rouge and other surrounding areas.

The year 1873 marked the opening of St. Joseph Catholic Church, under the direction of Father Germain Martin. Catholic believers were present around Fort Adams area since 1682, when on Easter Sunday, historians claimed the celebration of the first Mass, not only of the area but for all Mississippi soil.

The town of Woodville was incorporated in 1811, and for years the only Catholics families were the Elders, the Gordons, and the Poseys, who gave the community and history from a General to a Bishop.

The first Mass for the Woodville community was celebrated in the Gordon family house. The first families and their descendants have claimed and kept the history until these times.

For years the Catholic community of Woodville was served by priests of Natchez, until 1905 when Father Joseph B. Weis was the first resident priest.

The history of the Woodville community is rich, with many home and buildings, including St. Joseph Church, being included on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.

St. Joseph’s current pastor, Father Anthonyclaret was also celebrating his American citizenship during the festivities. He stated that all the parishioners “worked on weekends for months and contributed to the celebration.”

Edward (Eddie) Rispone, a Catholic from Baton Rouge, owns acres of property in the area for recreation, and even though he has his parish at home, he registered his family at St. Joseph, and contributes to the area because “it is special to belong to a historical Catholic Church.”
Like him, many of the attendees from Louisiana came because of the ties of their ancestors to the parish.
Ann and Octavio Gutierrez were parishioners for years. They moved back to the area from Texas, sharing their ties of many sacraments in this church. Ann now sings in the choir. Even though they have other homes, she said this has always been her “home church.”

Beautiful weather provided for a wonderful outdoor gathering for the 150th anniversary of St. Joseph Church. On right, smoke- master Mac Fletcher of Daddy Mac’s BBQ in action at the event. (Photos by Tereza Ma)

By Joe Lee
MADISON – On the evening of Aug. 7, the family life center at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Madison resembled a fine restaurant, with white tablecloths and soft candlelight creating the perfect backdrop for a huge crowd to congratulate Msgr. Elvin Sunds on the golden anniversary of his ordination as a priest.

It was a fitting tribute to the kind, soft-spoken man who grew up in Iowa and has spent more than fifty years of his life bringing Mississippians of different backgrounds together. The throng waiting to enjoy the mouth-watering dinner was no surprise after the standing room only gathering at Mass, which made Sunds feel, in his words, deeply affirmed.

“When I first saw the church packed for the Mass, I was genuinely overwhelmed,” he said. “I had no idea so many people over the years from so many parishes – and from Catholic Charities – wanted to express their gratitude.”

Sunds felt the call toward the priesthood while a senior in high school, but he wanted something more exciting than the Diocese of Des Moines, especially after being told by his vocation director that he was expected to teach high school for the first ten years after ordination.

“During my junior year at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Conception, Missouri, my spiritual director suggested I spend a summer working for a friend of his in New York City named Father John Powis. This was 1967, and Father Powis was working in the rough Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, a largely Puerto Rican and African American neighborhood.

“I was impressed at what Father Powis was doing and found an apartment in a condemned building for the summer. I worked mornings at a commercial laundry to support myself and spent afternoons organizing recreational programs for the neighborhood kids.”

Sunds had seminarian classmates from Mississippi who urged him to visit the state, which he did for the first time that fall.

“Cardinal Bernard Law was the vocation director then for what was the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson,” Sunds said. “He arranged for me to spend several months with Father Nathaniel Machesky, who was pastor of St. Francis of Assisi in Greenwood.

“This was predominantly an African American parish. They were offering education for the kids in the grade school there, a wonderful alternative to what wasn’t a good education in the Greenwood public schools. I realized the Natchez-Jackson Diocese was where I needed to be.”

Since his ordination by Bishop Joseph Brunini at Our Lady of the Gulf in Bay St. Louis on Aug. 5, 1973, Sunds has pastored in Biloxi, Jackson, Meridian, Greenville and Corinth. Revered for his work with Catholic Charities (where he served as executive director from 1978-1994), he was honored by the Mississippi NAACP in 1982 with the organization’s Outstanding Service Award.

“We established programs while I was there to serve people that had not been served in Mississippi,” Sunds said. “I really encouraged the employees to think toward trying to change the system and make a bigger impact than just the person we were serving. My first hire was Linda Raff as associate director. We made a great team.”

“Msgr. Sunds brought a sense of social justice for all of God’s children, especially those poor and vulnerable,” said Raff, who succeeded Sunds as executive director in 1994 and served in that role 14 years before returning for a final year as director in 2014. “I appreciated that he administered the agency in a very fair-minded way, and it will always be one of my greatest privileges to have worked for him.”

“We’re only 2.5 percent Catholic in the Jackson diocese,” Sunds said. “But we have a tremendous impact, and we have an even bigger impact when we work together ecumenically. The Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference was Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Jewish – lots of denominations – that worked together in the civil rights era.

“When we work together as people of faith, we can make a tremendous impact in Mississippi, such as the changing of the state flag. The football community, the academic community and the business community were behind it, but it was also the Catholic bishop, Methodist bishop, Episcopal bishop and others that agreed we needed to change it.”

“Msgr. Sunds and I have been friends for almost 30 years,” said retired pastor Raymon Leake. “He invited me to speak in his church (St. Patrick in Meridian at the time), and I invited him to speak in mine (First Baptist of Meridian).

“We’ve worked together on projects as significant as establishing a children’s home, and as seemingly insignificant as sharing with a community that Christians of different backgrounds can work together for the benefit of those who need us.”

“Msgr. Sunds was my predecessor at St. Patrick and did the hard work in setting up a relationship between (predominantly white) St. Patrick and (predominantly black) St. Joseph,” said retired priest Father Frank Cosgrove. “What he did should serve as a model for other places.”

“The attendance at 8:30 Sunday Mass at St. Joseph is now about fifty percent white – they come for the music and hospitality, both of which are wonderful – and Msgr. Sunds deserves great credit for that. A St. Patrick parishioner told me that Msgr. Sunds brought the Meridian Catholic community into the twenty-first century.”

In residence at St. Francis in Madison since officially retiring in 2019, Sunds has taken time off to travel the country, most notably an 8,000-mile excursion that took him to eight national parks and three national monuments. He and Leake, both avid outdoorsmen, have hiked together through the Tetons, the Sierras, the Rockies, and from France into Switzerland through the Alps. He even pastored for a month in 2021 in Nome, Alaska. [Click here to ready the story on his trip to Nome]

Sunds has the admiration of St. Francis pastor Father Albeenreddy Vatti, who praised his brother priest’s work ethic, organizational skills and the simple lifestyle he leads. He has also earned the trust and respect of the parish’s youth.

“When you’re a young priest, you’re kind of a mentor to young people because you’re not far removed from them in age,” Sunds said. “When you get to be middle age, you’re more like a parent, and the relationship changes a bit. Then you get to a stage where you’re more like a grandparent. Maybe they relate to you in a way they wouldn’t relate to their parents.

“You reach out by being accepting and non-critical. And listening.”